


Stasis

by letsstartagain



Series: We're Here Because We're Here [6]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, M/M, pre-season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-10 13:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17426393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letsstartagain/pseuds/letsstartagain
Summary: Sometime between the medal ceremony and theEnterprise's unexpected appearance, Paul sits on a large bench in a small park.





	1. Chapter 1

Paul sat alone on a large bench in a small park, warmly familiar thermos of hot chocolate in his hand. Before him, fog smothered a scrawny tree, all twiggy arms and spindly trunk. The sun warmed the back of his neck, and he sat and watched as the fog thinned and retreated to the looming monolith at the heart of the clearing, where it lingered.

Mechanically, he lifted Hugh’s thermos to his lips and took a sip.

An improbably tall man clacked by in improbably tall heels. Paul strained to follow the sounds of his departure until they, too, were swallowed by the fog.

He was glad for the fog. He wouldn’t have been able to stand the absence alone. 

He clenched his empty hand convulsively, then jammed it into the pocket of his pants, touch frozen through the fabric. He took another sip.

Quieter, quicker footsteps approached. A jogger. He stared at the lump of his hand inside the pocket of his pants and willed warmth back into his fingertips. The back of his neck burned. He jerked his gaze back to the fog.

The monolith at the center of the clearing was the ugliest fucking thing in a fifty block radius, and he, gratifyingly enough, had not been the only one of that opinion upon its unfortunate erection. It was an eyesore, this simple fact exacerbated by its passive submission to the area’s artistically-inclined youth. Even through the fog, he could make out several species’ worth of gleefully painted genitalia scrawled across its highly polished, scratch-resistant surface. He raised the thermos to his lips again.

“Lieutenant Commander Stamets.”

Paul choked quietly on his chocolate. The approaching footsteps, he realized, had ceased. Deliberately, he withdrew his hand from his pocket and wrapped it around the thermos. He looked up.

“Michael,” he said.

They regarded each other in suppressed surprise for a period of uncertain silence.

“It’s good to see you,” Michael said.

Paul considered hating himself for believing her, but it was a tired, fleeting thought. He took another slow sip and let them both stew.

“I used to come here a lot,” he replied.

Michael crossed her arms across her chest. She didn’t look as if she’d run the five miles from their off-campus housing block, which Paul was sure she had. She looked prepared to make it a ten-mile round trip, which Paul was sure she considered invigorating, as opposed to acutely psychotic.

“Oh,” Paul said, turning away from her and squinting slightly, “There he is.”

Michael turned and saw a small man with a large bucket and a larger squeegee emerge from the fog at the base of the monolith. Perplexed, she watched as he carefully set the bucket down and submerged the squeegee.

“He does this every morning,” Paul said.

Michael watched the man withdraw his squeegee from the bucket and begin scrubbing away evidence of interspecies copulation.

“He is not an employee,” she said.

“No,” Paul replied.

“I have never seen him before.”

Paul rubbed his thumb in small circles against the thermos. Michael turned back to him, inscrutable. He took another slow sip, eyes fixed on the diminutive figure bobbing in the fog.

“It’s a fucking ugly thing, isn’t it?” he said quietly.

He felt Michael’s gaze through the heat of the sun. It was sharp, piercing. 

“It is a monument to the dead,” she replied.

He lifted the thermos for another sip and found it empty. Somehow, he remained surprised at its lingering warmth. Carefully, he set it down beside himself on the flat slab of rock he had commandeered as a bench.

“You run out here every day?” he asked.

“Almost,” she replied.

“Must be nice.”

Michael hesitated a moment, weighing her words. 

“I greatly prefer it to the lower decks.”

Paul smirked faintly.

“Still running in circles though, aren’t you?”

“Only in certain dimensions.”

Paul’s lip curled, and he picked up the thermos again, rolling it absently between his hands. He watched the little man with the large squeegee, scrubbing away what would inevitably reappear tomorrow. He was making good progress, Paul noted.

He looked up at Michael, who watched him with measured curiosity. His hands stilled.

“It was good to see you,” Michael said.

Paul nodded vaguely.

As her footsteps retreated, he set the thermos down again. It was cool in the palm of his hand.


	2. Chapter 2

The _Discovery_ , suspended in space and time, loomed large and sleek through the bay window. The familiar swell of pride he felt at the sight was tempered only a moment later by piercing bitterness. Bitterness--he’d outlasted the anger.

Everything he’d needed fit into the holdall Hugh had given him one year in the no man’s land between the end of Hanukkah and Christmas. Some clothes, several datapads, a quantum backup or two--all Starfleet-issue paraphernalia, packed into the bag at his feet.

Viciously, he bent and scooped it up. The door behind him hissed open, however, and he stopped short, dreading conversation.

“Commander Burnham,” he said to his reflection in the window. _Discovery_ ’s starboard nacelle slashed through the insignia on his chest.

“Stamets,” she replied from the door.

He watched her reflection sharpen as she approached. She looked younger, somehow, in uniform. More ordinary. His breath fogged over their reflections, and he turned away.

“Any word on our new captain?” he asked. Mockery colored his words.

Michael shook her head.

“Nothing beyond what you and I already know,” she replied.

Paul clenched his jaw, dormant irritation bursting through callous indifference.

“I don’t know why I bother,” he muttered. Artificial light reflected from the _Discovery_ ’s gleaming hull danced across the opposite wall.

“Bother doing what?”

Paul shifted his bag to his other hand and considered the fractals adorning the gloomy storage bay doors.

“Nothing,” he replied. He steeled himself to brush her off, to push past her as if her physical presence was the only barrier keeping him from boarding his ship.

His ship, their ship. He faltered. They’d all been gutted, in some form or another, hollowed out, like the _Discovery_ ’s engine room--clinically subdivided for earthbound confinement. Bodies had been buried, the ground turned over fresh on mending hearts, but there could be no hope for a return to baseline, just this waiting, this ruthless silence.

They were all caught in stasis, frightened of their own reflections.

Paul smiled tightly, lips pressed together. He turned away from Michael’s unnerving gaze and watched another shuttle transport dock across the shipyard. It wheeled gracefully--artificially--in a pre-programmed landing sequence.

“I’m glad you decided to stay,” Michael said.

“What else was I supposed to do?” he returned. It fell from his lips more honestly than he’d intended, desperation under a veneer of bitterness. “You understand.” He allowed himself to picture the look on Hugh’s face and was unsurprised to find that expression mirrored faintly in Michael’s features. Inevitably, he broke. “It’s easier this way,” he admitted, gaze sliding away over her shoulder again to the pale, glimmering network of fractured light sliding away into shadow.

Michael inclined her head slightly. Paul marveled at her strength. He shifted, uneasy.

“I need to go check on the retrofits,” he said. His words were plainly hollow, and he made no effort to fill them. “I should have flown out earlier.”

He wondered when Michael had come to know him so well that she said nothing, letting the emptiness of his assertion swallow him whole. Jaw clenched, he brushed past her, hand clenched tightly around the handle of his bag.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](https://inflatablezebras.tumblr.com/)


End file.
